1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to controlling ectoparasites on animals.
2. Description of Related Art
There exist many diseases that are transmittable to man and animals by ectoparasites. Of particular concern is Lyme disease. This disease has been shown to have serious and long-lasting, debilitating effects on man and domestic animals.
The economic impact of Lyme disease is considerable in terms of the cost of the health care associated with the disease, and the loss of productivity for people disabled by the illness. The white-tailed deer is the reproducible host of the adult female deer tick. When these ticks attach to deer, feed to repletion and then drop off they produce between 2,500 to 3,500 eggs, most of all of which hatch in the leaf litter below. Deer are therefore potent amplification arms for deer tick populations.
A system for controlling the deer tick population through the effective application of acaricides to deer is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,050,539. In that system, a salt-lick is provided to entice the deer to a particular location. An automatic pressure responsive spray device for dispensing acaricide is positioned to spray the deer. The spray device is actuated by a sensor which detects the pressure on a platform caused by a deer when licking the salt lick. In this way the deer come to the site of application of the acaricide on a regular basis to be de-ticked.
Sensing the pressure on a platform is not always satisfactory. The pressure applied to the platform by a deer licking the salt-lick, may or may not actuate the spray. If the sensor is very sensitive to pressure, then it can easily be actuated by other animals which may approach the salt-lick, which animals would not be carrying the ticks. Alternatively, these systems are not constantly watched and if an object, such as a branch or the like, fell upon the platform, the acaricide would be sprayed continuously.